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WHY OUR FLAG FLOATS 
OVER OREGON 



WHY OUR FLAG FLOATS 
OVER OREGON 



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THE CONQUEST OF OUR GREAT 
NORTHWEST 



LEAVITT H HALLOCK, D. D. 

Author of "Hawaii under King Kalakaua" 



PORTLAND MAINE 

SMITH & SALE PUBLISHERS 

I9II 



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COPYRIGHT igii 

BY 

SMITH & SALE 



Au;iior 
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Scene on the Willamette River Frontispiece 
Green Park School . . . . vii 
Mount Shasta .... 3 
Mount Hood, Oregon ... 6 
Portland, Oregon, and Mount Hood 11 
Mount Adams, Oregon . . 15 
Rev. Gushing Eells, D.D. . . 19 
High School, Walla Walla . . 23 
House of John W. Langdon . . 26 
A Walla Walla Residence . . 31 
Largest Apple Tree in the World . 34 
" Old Mission " at Waiilatpu, Wash- 
ington ..... 36 
Conservatory of Music, Whitman 

College 39 

Whitman College Gymnasium . 42 
Mount "Ranier" or Mount "Ta- 

coma " . . . . .45 

Statue of Marcus Whitman . . 47 
Home of Prof. L. F. Anderson, Walla 

Walla . . . . 49 

In the Walla Walla Valley . . 53 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

"The Great Grave " in 1866 . . 55 

The Grave To-day ... 59 

Market Garden near Walla Walla . 61 

Artesian Well, Walla Walla . 64 

The Whitman Monument . . 69 
Whitman Memorial Building, Walla 

Walla 71 

Rev. Stephen B. L. Penrose . . 75 

Irrigation Pipe Line, Walla Walla 76 




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FOREWORD 

TN the evolution of these United States five 
signal events occurred : the Louisiana 
Purchase ; the Annexation of Texas ; settling 
Oregon ; acquiring California ; and buying 
Alaska; all of which swung wide our 
Western boundary, but for none of them 
did we go to war. Among them all, not one 
was more thrilling than the winning of 
Oregon. 

For generations the Hudson Bay Com- 
pany found fabulous profits in the Indian 
fur trade, from the Pacific to the Rockies, 
studiously guarding the country* s secrets, 
and decrying the land as unproductive and 
unwholesome. It was their clear intent, 
when settlement became inevitable, to turn 
over the whole territory to England ; and 
no American statesman was sufficiently alert 
to thwart their well-laid schemes. 



Vll 



FOREWORD 

Yes ! 'mid all the intrigue and diplomatic 
strife, there was one man, with the clear 
vision of a seer, whose keen discernment and 
quick heroism saved the day, — though 
crimson blends with gold in the fateful 
struggle which followed. 

Marcus Whitman was the hero, and his 
brave deed the pivot on which turned our 
ownership of Oregon : the crisis is outlined 
in this little book. May it stablish your 
faith in one whose well-earned crown some 
critics have sought to displace ! Every year 
now adds to the lustre of his fame, and 
posterity will ever more proudly point to this 
pioneer of the Waiilatpu Mission whose deed 
of valor flung our flag over the Oregon 
Empire, there to float while the world stands. 

LEAVITT H. HALLOCK 

Lewis ton, Maine, IQII 



WHY OUR FLAG FLOATS 
OVER OREGON 




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WHY OUR FLAG FLOATS 
OVER OREGON 

THE acquisition of our great North- 
west territory, formerly known as 
"The Oregon Country," including the 
present States of Oregon, Washington and 
Idaho, affords a chapter of romantic 
interest, culminating in a most unfortunate 
tragedy. When the play was over, the 
United States were found in peaceful 
possession of a vast and valuable domain 
greatly coveted by England but rescued 
from her grasp chiefly through the sagacity 
and heroism of one notable man whose 
patriotic devotion saved the day for the 
States. Too long delayed were the Na- 
tion's honors, and far too slow the recog- 
nition which was his by right. 

This little book will aim to bring out the 
facts in this strange story ; and if it serve to 
place a wreath of glory upon the brow of 
one of our too-long-forgotten braves, it will 



WHY OUR FLAG 

be by the inevitable logic of events rather 
than any partiality of the writer. 

It was a foregone conclusion that the 
sturdy plant which rooted on the rim of 
the blue sea near Massachusetts Bay should 
carry its cry of free religion and free 
citizenship westward to the broad Pacific : 
but how those feeble, dependent colonies 
could ever compass so vast a scheme, in 
the face of Spanish possessions, French 
complications and British ambitions, no 
wildest dreamer of that day could have 
dared to prophesy. 

But the years rolled round while the 
little plant grew sturdy : and when she 
felt her power, with independence fully 
achieved and her blood hot with lusty 
youth, there began a series of movements 
upon the international chess-board, often 
made hesitatingly and in the dark, which 
resulted so favorably to the United States 
that the blindest student of American 
history cannot fail to read the evidence of 
a kindly, over-ruling Providence. 

Two most startling and far-reaching 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

moves in this fateful game will early 
demand our careful attention ; they are, 
the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and the 
Oregon Treaty of 1846. 

The discovery of the Columbia River 
by Captain Gray in 1792, sending mission- 
aries to the Oregon Indians in 1835, and 
the important part played by the Hudson 
Bay Fur Company, all come in for a share 
of our interest; for by all these means did 
the United States finally secure possession 
of those vast resources and advantages 
which have given to us continental area 
and the supremacy of two oceans. 

To properly adjust the focus of our 
vision, we must go back to the beginning 
of the controversy. In these days when 
everybody knows that the Star of Empire 
hangs in the zenith west of the Mississippi 
River, and that the Rocky Mountains may 
some day prove to be the bridge of the 
balance on which our continental destiny 
shall swing this way and that in unstable 
equilibrium, it is most difficult to put our- 
selves in the position of the statesmen in 



WHY OUR FLAG 

the early years of the nineteenth century, or 
even to believe the accuracy of the record 
of their speeches. 

Almost we lost all Oregon for an interest 
in the Newfoundland fisheries ; and it was 
well on in the century when Daniel Webster 
uttered those marvellous sentiments which 
to-day seem freighted with astounding 
ignorance concerning this great Northwest 
territory. He exclaimed with evident 
emotion : " What do we want with the 
vast, worthless area, — this region of sav- 
ages and wild beasts, of deserts, of shifting 
sands and whirlwinds of dust, of cactus 
and prairie dogs ! To what use could we 
ever hope to put these great deserts, or 
these endless mountain ranges, impenetra- 
ble and covered to their base with eternal 
I 

What can we ever hope to do with the 
Western coast, a coast of three thousand 
miles, rock-bound, cheerless and uninviting, 
and not a harbor on it! What use have 
we for such a country ! Mr. President, I 
will never vote one cent from the public 



snow 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

treasury to place the Pacific coast one 
inch nearer Boston than it is now." 

Senator Thomas H. Benton in 1825 
said : "The ridge of the Rocky Mountains 
may be named as a convenient, natural and 
everlasting boundary : — along this ridge 
the Western limit of the Republic should 
be drawn, and the statue of the fabled god 
Terminus should be erected on its highest 
peak, never to be thrown down." 

Senator McDuffie said in 1846: "I 
would not give a pinch of snuff for the 
whole territory. I wish the Rocky Moun- 
tains were an impassable barrier. If there 
was an embankment of even five feet to be 
removed I would not consent to expend 
five dollars to remove it and enable our 
population to go there. I thank God for 
His mercy in placing the Rocky Mountains 
there." 

Senator Dayton of New Jersey said in 
1844: "With the exception of land along 
the Willamette and strips along other 
water-courses, the whole country is as 
irredeemable and barren a waste as the 



WHY OUR FLAG 

Desert of Sahara. Nor is this the worst ; 
the climate is so unfriendly to human life 
that the native population has dwindled 
away under the ravages of malaria." 

About the same date the National Intel- 
ligencer published these words : " Of all 
the countries upon the face of the earth 
Oregon is one of the least favored by 
Heaven. It is almost as barren as Sahara 
and quite as unhealthy as the Campagna 
of Italy." 

And Senator Dayton added this pessi- 
mistic utterance : " God forbid that the 
time should ever come when a State on 
the shores of the Pacific, with its interests 
and tendencies of trade all looking toward 
the Asiatic nations of the East, shall add 
its jarring claims to our already distracted 
and over-burdened Confederacy ! " 

Such was the sentiment of those best 
posted in regard to that Northwest terri- 
tory, and from such utterances as these did 
the people form their opinions. 

We shall presently witness a remarkable 
revolution in public sentiment, effected 



8 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

within two short years and expressed in 
the treaty of 1846, concerning Oregon, and 
we hope to make clear the pivot on which 
that revolution turned. 

To begin in detail our study of the 
question " Why Our Flag Floats over 
Oregon," we will first take up the Louis- 
iana Purchase, and there discover one 
important element in our complex claim to 
the disputed territory. 

It was the greed of England which led 
France ever to offer Louisiana to the 
United States. When the Amiens Treaty 
began to crumble, Napoleon, knowing that 
he could not successfully defend New 
Orleans and that England would surely 
effect its capture, preferred to surrender it 
to Americans rather than to his rival ; and 
so he said to Monroe, our Minister of 
State : I acquired the great territory to 
which the Mississippi mouth is the 
entrance, and I have a right to dispose of 
my own. Why will not your country buy 
it from France ? " Napoleon then added 
this significant word : " Could I defend 



WHY OUR FLAG 

this territory, not all the gold in the world 
would buy it : but I am giving to a friend 
what I am unable to keep. I need a hun- 
dred million francs ! " 

The fastest ship of the French navy 
took Monroe's astounding dispatches to 
President Jefferson ; — the purchase was 
concluded, and the greatest business trans- 
action ever achieved by the United States 
was consummated through the exigencies 
of Europe, and a brilliant dash of Bona- 
parte's diplomacy. 

While the territory thus acquired did 
not technically include Oregon, yet James 
G. Blaine says in his "Twenty Years of 
Congress : " " It is not probable that we 
should have been able to maintain our 
title to Oregon if we had not secured the 
intervening country. The purchase of 
Louisiana may therefore be fairly said to 
have carried with it and secured to us our 
possession of Oregon." It may even be 
questioned, — since the Western boundary 
of the Louisiana Purchase was left wholly 
undefined, — whether it did not literally 



10 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

involve the title to all lands clear to the 
Pacific coast : at all events it conveyed to 
the United States the entire interests which 
France claimed, even to the outmost limit 
of her possessions. 

We must now go far back in the line of 
events and examine the steps which led 
up to the Oregon Treaty of 1846. In 
order to adequately apprehend the situa- 
tion, our survey must be a careful one, and 
we shall find it fraught with many consid- 
erations of thrilling interest. 

It is 1792, three hundred years after 
the discovery of America, and much of 
the American continent still remains an 
unknown land. 

We take our stand on the shores of the 
Pacific, and note the fact that three adven- 
turous ships are coasting up and down these 
Northern waters, searching for a rumored 
river whose very existence is in doubt, and 
yet to discover which, if it be a reality, is the 
chief object of these three explorers. One 
is a Spanish vessel ; one is Vancouver's ship 
from England ; and one is the schooner of 



11 



WHY OUR FLAG 

Captain Robert Gray from Boston. Van- 
couver had passed northward across the 
Columbia's mouth and had not observed 
it : he retraced his course for closer inspec- 
tion. As he came slowly and cautiously 
into the latitude of the great river, wonder- 
ing whether after all it might be a myth, 
judge of his chagrin at seeing a Yankee 
Captain, flying the stars and stripes, just 
emerging from the long-coveted prince of 
rivers, having explored several miles of it, 
having landed on its banks and claimed it 
and the lands it drained, for the United 
States ! Ah ! what a pity he had not seen 
it on the upward trip ! No ! the discovery 
was reserved for the redoubtable Yankee, 
and twelve years later the Lewis and Clarke 
Expedition traversed its entire length from 
the source to its mouth, — some fourteen 
hundred miles, and charted the same for 
the Government. 

The great contention however is yet 
untouched : it was, the claim of England 
to the whole Northwest by reason of its 
occupancy by the Hudson Bay Company 



12 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

in prosecuting its extensive fur trade, lo ! 
these many years. The Hudson Bay 
Company was organized in 1670, by King 
Charles II, and was granted, by its original 
charter, absolute proprietorship over all the 
immense regions, "discovered or undiscov- 
ered," "within the entrance to Hudson 
Strait." 

The original capital stock of the Hud- 
son Bay Company was $50,820., which 
increased in fifty years to $457,000., besides 
paying dividends; it incorporated into itself 
T! he Northwestern Fur Company and in 
1821, it had an accumulated capital of 
almost two millions, ($1,916,000,) every 
dollar of which had been earned by the 
original investment ; in addition to this enor- 
mous surplus it had paid an unfailing, and 
at that time somewhat unusual, dividend 
of ten per cent per annum. A single 
vessel has been known to carry to London 
a cargo of furs valued at four hundred 
thousand dollars. It is not strange that 
such a Company, controlling seventy-five 
degrees of longitude and twenty-eight 



13 



WHY OUR FLAG 

degrees of latitude, — from the mouth of 
the Mackenzie River to the California 
border, — should have held to its posses- 
sions with tenacious grasp. And indeed it 
was a shrewd and sagacious business 
administration which they maintained over 
a broad and productive savage domain. 
They preserved the good nature of their 
patrons, entreated them with gifts, showered 
upon them numberless kindnesses, every 
item of which conspired to fill the coffers 
of the Hudson Bay Company. It was 
good management for their own profit, 
aiming to keep out every settler who would 
substitute an acre of wheat for a pelt, or a 
family home for the lair of a wild beast. 

In order to. prevent settlers from coming 
in, there seemed to be no more effective 
means than to keep the world ignorant of 
the resources of that country. Ignorance 
was more potent than bayonets, and cost 
less; and so, if shrewd manipulation of 
facile pen could hold forever latent all 
desire for this "forbidding, miasmatic wil- 
derness," it were cheaper and better than 



14 




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FLOATS OVER OREGON 

battalions of war to safe-guard their remu- 
nerative fur-pastures ! 

That explains the character and trend of 
the literature of that day touching "The 
Oregon Country." Such publications as 
The Edinburgh Review and the best Lon- 
don papers often told of the unhealthful 
and valueless regions of the Northwest in 
which no white man could live, — fit only 
for the wild beast or the still wilder savage 
Indian. 

For more than a century this policy 
succeeded; and those American statesmen 
whose mistaken utterances on the floor of 
the United States Senate we have quoted, 
were men of letters, well posted in the 
only available authority upon the country ; 
they had studied the situation and they 
spoke by the book; — but the book was 
wrong, purposely wrong. The student 
would reason thus : Who else should know 
the facts regarding this forbidding land so 
far away as well as those intelligent and 
intrepid "factors" of the Hudson Bay 
Company who had dared to spend the 



15 



WHY OUR FLAG 

best years of their lives on those inhospi- 
table and dangerous shores ! Thus their 
only sources of information were studiously 
unreliable. This explains the otherwise 
unaccountable ignorance of our public men 
at Washington, and makes clear the meth- 
ods and motives of that great Fur Com- 
pany which was chiefly concerned in 
preventing all permanent settlement upon 
the soil. 

Notwithstanding all this, several unsuc- 
cessful attempts were made during the 
early years of the nineteenth century, to 
settle there, or to establish American trade 
with the Oregon Indians. 

At length, after embarrassing defeats and 
failures, in 1818 an agreement was reached 
and the following treaty was signed between 
England and the United States : 

" It is agreed that any country that may 
be claimed by either party on the North- 
west coast of America westward of the 
Stoney Mountains shall, together with its 
harbors, bays, creeks and the navigation of 
all rivers within the same, be free and open 



16 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

for ten years from the date of the signatures 
of this convention, to the vessels, citizens 
and subjects of the two powers ; it being 
well understood that the agreement is not 
to be construed to the prejudice of any 
claim which either of the two high con- 
tracting parties may have to any part of 
said country ; nor shall it be taken to affect 
the claims of any other power or State to 
any of said country: the only object of the 
high contracting parties in that respect 
being to prevent disputes and differences 
among themselves." 

You note the fact that this is a treaty of 
indecision; a ^' modus vivendi'' which set 
tied nothing : it was intended to settle 
nothing, but to lull to slumber every 
question which might arise regarding the 
occupation of this territory. That was its 
immediate object. England had every pos- 
sible reason, — through the Hudson Bay 
Company which was skimming the rich 
cream from this vast area unhindered, — to 
prevent any agitation whatever by which 
the question of ultimate possession could 



17 



WHY OUR FLAG 

be even remotely considered. England did 
not care to own the country ; she preferred 
to go on skimming the cream, which was 
the safer policy. For if England or Amer- 
ica or any other nation once raised the 
question of ownership, light would be 
thrown upon these hidden leagues, which 
would reveal their richness; and settlers 
would flock thither, every one of whom, no 
matter of what nationality, would imperil 
the profits of the Hudson Bay Fur Com- 
pany by substituting agriculture and com- 
merce for Indian trapping and trading. 

The policy of silence therefore, aided by 
judicious deceit and hiding of the real facts, 
while they continued to pile up their undis- 
turbed profits, was a shrewd policy, and 
none knew better how to press it than 
those long-headed schemers who had suc- 
cessfully managed this great monopoly for 
several generations. 

You must have clearly seen by this time 
that it was not England's interest to inform 
even her own people concerning this North- 
west territory : for an English settler would 



18 




REV. GUSHING EELLS, D.D. 

Pioneer Missionary and Founder of Whitman College 

See Page 70 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

damage the fur trade as surely as any other. 
It was her purpose to keep it wild, without 
intrusion from any source, and to stave off 
the entire question of national ownership 
by the policy of silence or perversion of 
the real facts to the last possible moment. 
When, at last, the question of ownership 
would no longer down, then, of course, 
England intended to foreclose upon those 
broad leagues whose value no one knew as 
well as did the Hudson Bay Company 
" factor." 

Thus much is needed to show the spirit 
of the treaty from which we have quoted, 
and the solid reasons for its non-committal 
provisions. 

The treaty of 1818, reveals a policy 
of '' laissex faire : " Do nothing : say lit- 
tle : keep dark : and so they continued, 
with prudence and refined skill, politely to 
freeze out every settler, to break every 
plowshare, to arrest every approaching 
wagon wheel, and to prevent by a system 
of overland forts and seaport surveillance, 
every projected step which looked toward 



19 



WHY OUR FLAG 

actual occupancy of the country. This 
deliberate policy was incarnate in that 
treaty. Just before its expiration, in 1827, 
its terms were re-affirmed, so that the giant 
company which had coined money out of 
savage life and wilderness productions for 
more than fifteen decades of power, contin- 
ued its profitable work until the surging 
ambitions of a growing American civiliza- 
tion trenched upon its silent, savage sections 
of unsurveyed expanse, and this "let-alone, 
— keep-dark " policy came at last to an 
end. It had been a long, successful strug- 
gle. 

By the Ashburton Treaty signed August 
9, 1842, between Lord Ashburton and 
Daniel Webster, establishing the present 
boundary between Maine and Canada, end- 
ing the African slave trade, agreeing upon 
the extradition of criminals and other mat- 
ters, the Hudson Bay Company was shorn 
of its kingly power and greatly restricted in 
its operation, though it still continues work- 
ing a mine of wealth and paying not less 
than $400,000 in annual dividends to its 



20 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

stockholders. The Ashburton Treaty fix- 
ing the boundary at forty-nine required the 
United States to liquidate the claims of 
the Hudson Bay Company and the Puget 
Sound Company below the forty-ninth par- 
allel, and Canada to pay those of the two 
companies above that latitude. These bills 
amounted to over ten million dollars, but 
were eventually settled for much less than 
that sum. 

Going back now to the period before 
the negotiation of the treaty, we find it 
tacitly understood by both nations that, 
while the claims of neither to the owner- 
ship of this territory should be pressed to 
an issue upon the basis of discovery or 
possession, so long as that possession was 
based merely upon the establishment of 
trading posts and occasional entree into 
the lands by sporadic excursions, — yet the 
actual occupancy of the soil by any con- 
siderable body of settlers, reclaiming its 
acres for agriculture and subduing the 
same to the plow, should be recognized as 
a substantial claim to ownership. 



21 



WHY OUR FLAG 

The difficulties of such occupation from 
the sea were vast, owing to the immense 
distance from any base of supplies, the 
unknown features, and ill reports generally 
prevalent, and the perpetual vigilance of 
the guard mterposed by the self-interested 
Fur Companies. The difficulties of its 
occupation by land were even greater, 
owing to the well-nigh impassable moun- 
tain barriers, the wide and deadly stretches 
of unwatered plain, and the extended line 
of the Hudson Bay Company's forts, fur- 
nished with every artifice of truth or false- 
hood to deter immigrants from undertaking 
to continue their perilous journey to the 
coast. 

Following is a list of the claims which 
the United States had put forward in 
defense of her right to the Oregon country 
before its actual settlement : 

I. Oregon belonged to the United 
States by right of discovery; witness the 
voyage of Captain Gray of Boston into the 
Columbia River in 1792. 



22 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

11. The Louisiana Purchase, by which 
France sold to the United States her entire 
right to the Northwest, from New Orleans 
to the sunset, for fifteen million dollars, in 
1803. 

in. The explorations of the United 
States Commission of ' Lewis and Clarke " 
in 1804-06, which reached the head waters 
of the Columbia River by land, and fol- 
lowed it to its mouth on the Pacific. 

IV. The actual settlement of Astoria 
on the Columbia by an American Fur 
Company, which, though a private enter- 
prise, had the sanction of the Government. 
In the Treaty of Ghent, Astoria which 
had been captured by an English squadron, 
was ordered restored to the United States. 

V. The Treaty with Spain in 1818, by 
which she relinquished all claim to the dis- 
puted territory in favor of the United States. 

VI. The Mexican Treaty of 1828 
which gave to the United States any inter- 
est which Mexico may ever have had in 
the disputed territory. 



23 



WHY OUR FLAG 

The claim of England to the Northwest, 
or the Oregon country, rested primarily 
upon the quasi ownership of the land by the 
Hudson Bay Fur Company and its occu- 
pation by that company; this we have 
seen was no proper settlement but a 
monopoly to prevent settlement. 

England also demurred at Captain Gray's 
claim to the discovery of the Columbia 
River, on the ground that he only sailed a 
few miles up the river, while Vancouver, 
shortly after, thoroughly explored it. 

The lines are now drawn, and we are 
prepared to uncover a series of events by 
which, in the race for actual possession of the 
lands and reclaiming them for agriculture, 
the United States by a sudden and brilliant 
coup d'etat strode far to the front, distanced 
her rival unmistakably and made the 
Treaty of 1846, which flung our flag to 
the breeze forever, a logical necessity. 

The critical move by which this castle 
fell was made by a pawn, but in making it 
he reached the king's row, and richly 



24 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

deserves a crown ! The facts are not as 
widely known and generally taught as they 
should be, and have even been disputed by 
some who would rob this christian martyr 
of his rights ; but they are unmistakably 
proven; and it is my joy to bring into the 
limelight certain significant facts of history 
which I have either observed at first hand 
or heard described by the lips of trust- 
worthy, living witnesses as herein related. 
The first act in the decisive drama which 
grew into a tragedy, is unsurpassed in the 
pages of romance and yet bears all the 
marks of truth. I first heard the tale from 
the lips of an aged pioneer, "Father Eells," 
whom I laid away in Tacoma at the age 
of eighty-three, burying many precious 
secrets with his wornout body. He was 
a dear friend and associate of Dr. Marcus 
Whitman, and was himself stationed near 
that section of the territory from which the 
initial movement started. The story is 
this: — 

In 1832, four Flathead Indian chiefs 
appeared in the streets of Saint Louis, then 



25 



WHY OUR FLAG 

a frontier city, seeking "the white man's 
Book of Life." Their worn and weary 
condition, after their fateful journey of 
three thousand miles, evidenced the truth 
of their utterances. General Clark was 
then in military command at Saint Louis 
and he took them in charge. As his 
Indian experience enabled him to com- 
municate with them, he showed them 
the churches, — he was a good Roman 
Catholic, — also the various interesting 
institutions of the city, but could give 
them no light upon the object of their 
search. 

Unused to the rich food and civilized 
habits of the city, two of them died during 
the winter. In the spring the remaining 
two chiefs set out for their distant home. 
General Clark gave them a farewell ban- 
quet at which the leading chief uttered the 
following speech, brimming with Indian 
eloquence and pathos, doubtless losing 
much in translation; but even so it was 
enough to stir the hearts of Christians with 
unwonted missionary zeal. 



26 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

He said : — "I come to you over the trail 
of many moons from the setting sun. You 
were the friends of my fathers, who have 
all gone the long way. I came with one 
eye partly open, for more light for my 
people who sit in darkness : I go back 
with both eyes closed. How can I go 
back blind to my blind people! I made 
my way to you with strong arms through 
many enemies and strange lands that I 
might carry back much to them : I go 
back with both arms broken and empty. 
Two fathers came with us; they were 
the braves of many winters and wars ; 
we leave them asleep here by your great 
water and wigwams ; they were tired in 
many moons and their moccasins wore 
out. 

" My people sent me to get the white 
man's Book of Heaven. You took me to 
where you allow your women to dance as 
we do not ours, and the Book was not 
there : you took me to where they worship 
the Great Spirit with candles, and the Book 
was not there. You showed me the 



27 



WHY OUR FLAG 

images of the good spirits and the pictures 
of the Good Land beyond, but the Book 
was not among them to tell us the way. 
I am going back the long and sad trail 
to my people in the dark land. You make 
my feet heavy with gifts and my mocca- 
sins grow old in carrying them, yet the 
Book is not among them. When I tell 
my poor, blind people, after one more 
snow, in the big council, that I did not 
bring the Book, no word will be spoken by 
our old men or by our young braves : one 
by one they will rise up and go out in 
silence. My people will die in darkness 
and they will go on the long path to other 
hunting grounds: no white man will go 
with them, and no white man's Book will 
make the way plain. 

" 1 have no more words." 

Of the historic genuineness of this 
strange mission from the Flatheads there 
can be no reasonable doubt. Gray, Reed, 
Simpson, Barrow, Parkman and Bancroft 
all record the fact. The speech bears all 
the marks of sincerity, as all who are 



28 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

familiar with such quaint, weird outbursts 
of Indian eloquence can testify. 

This speech was published, with the 
challenge, "Who will respond, to go 
beyond the Rocky Mountains and carry 
the Book of Heaven?" Traceable no 
doubt in part to this appeal, the American 
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis- 
sions, at Boston, sent to Oregon in 1836, 
Dr. Marcus Whitman and his wife and 
Dr. and Mrs. Henry H. Spaulding as 
missionaries to the Indians of that territory. 

That was a wonderful journey for deli- 
cate ladies and professional men to under- 
take. Trails were wild and difficult as well 
as dangerous: an adequate escort was not 
easily obtained ; Indians were untrustworthy 
en route, and perils manifold ; but it was 
heroically undertaken and successfully car- 
ried to completion, not for earthly gain but 
in the hope of doing good to a needy, 
savage race, some of whom at least had 
heard a note of hope, and were eager for 
the Book of Life. 

The hero of this tale and the leader of 



29 



WHY OUR FLAG 

the mission was Dr. Marcus Whitman, who 
was born September 4, 1802, at Rushville, 
New York. When eight years of age he 
lost his father and was then sent to Plain- 
field, Massachusetts, where he was con- 
verted and took up the study of Latin with 
Rev. Moses Hallock, a noted educator of 
that period, for forty-five years minister of 
the Congregational church in that place. 

Marcus Whitman longed to become a 
minister but was dissuaded by his brothers 
on account of his limited means; so he 
studied medicine with Dr. Ira Bryant of 
Rushville, and practised four years in 
Canada, after which he renewed his deter- 
mination to study for the ministry, but 
was finally obliged to relinquish his long- 
cherished ideal. With a passion for 
adventure, and a deep religious conviction, 
he offered himself to the American Board 
to go anywhere they might choose to send 
him. 

Mrs, Whitman, his wife, was Miss 
Narcissa Prentiss, born in Prattsburg, New 
York, March 14, 1808. She also had 



30 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

offered herself to the Board as a foreign 
missionary. It was about these days that 
the Flathead Indians made their pathetic 
appeal, and the Board determined to send 
Dr. Whitman to Oregon in response: these 
two appointees, after limited opportunity 
for love making, were married at Angelica, 
New York, in 1836, on the eve of starting, 
and their wedding journey took them sev- 
eral thousand miles across the continent 
when such a journey was one of great 
hardship and peril, never before under- 
taken by any white woman. 

When the farewell hymn was sung at 
the parting service in the church, this 
young missionary was in the choir, and as 
they reached the last stanza of the hymn 
beginning 

" Yes, my native land I love thee 
All thy scenes I love them well ; 

Friends, connections, happy country, 
Can I bid you all farewell ! " 

the scene was too tender for the sympa- 
thetic people, and Mrs. Whitman's was 



31 



WHY OUR FLAG 

the only voice that carried the song clear 
to its close, amid the tears of many weep- 
ing friends. 

Starting in snow and mud by sleigh and 
stage, they went to Pittsburg, thence by 
steamer to Saint Louis, and overland under 
the protection of the American Fur Com- 
pany who were just off for their annual 
expedition to the mountains. The com- 
pany had broken faith with them and were 
already five days on the road : to overtake 
them was a desperate chase, but they won 
the race, and Dr. Whitman with his farm 
wagon, Mr. Spaulding, Mr. Gray and two 
Indian boys, with horses and cows, pressed 
on over the long, long trail. 

We may not tarry upon the details of 
that romantic but exhausting ride : the 
fording of rivers ; traversing wearisome 
plains ; the difficult and perilous passes ; 
illness and weariness; but unwavering faith 
was theirs as the eventful wedding journey 
took them far away into those Indian fast- 
nesses toward the great Pacific. Referring 
to their path over the Rocky Mountains 



32 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

which Dr. Whitman himself discovered, — 
Dr. Nixon says, " Fremont discovered this 
pass in 1842, and went through it again 
in 1843 — but it is well to remember 
that upon this notable bridal tour, these 
Christian ladies passed over the same route 
six years before the ' Pathfinder ' or the 
engineer corps of the United States ever 
saw it." When they reached the summit 
of the Rockies, — where the Atlantic slope 
begins to dip to the westward and becomes 
the slope to the Pacific, — there, on the 
Fourth of July 1836, they alighted from 
their horses, spread their blankets upon the 
wild grass, planted the American flag to 
wave in the breeze, and kneeling, took 
possession of the Pacific slope " in the 
name of God and of the United States ! " 
There was no declaiming of the Declara- 
tion of Independence ; no band of music 
and oratory, yet few Independence days 
have witnessed a more tender or pathetic, 
aye, prophetic scene, than this one just 
over the great Rocky Mountain divide ! 
One incident of the journey is worthy 



33 



WHY OUR FLAG 

of note, for it became historic : it was the 
dogged determination of Dr. Whitman, to 
take through to the coast his farm wagon. 
It greatly enhanced the difficulty of the 
mountain passes, for sometimes a half 
dozen times a day it would tumble into a 
gulch, upset upon the rocks and otherwise 
hinder their progress : but he kept his 
wagon, and triumphantly brought it with 
him into the valley of the Columbia, land- 
ing it at Waiilatpu where he finally 
established his mission. All previous 
immigrants had been persuaded to leave 
their wagons at Fort Hall, but Dr. Whit- 
man was persistent, and we shall discover 
later the reason why. 

When they reached the rendezvous in 
the mountains, the Flathead and Nez Perces 
Indians welcomed these missionaries with 
great enthusiasm, and a large band of 
Indian women " with raven hair in two 
plaits, and white dresses of goat skins, 
ornamented with glass beads and haiqua 
shells glistening in the shining sun, — 
riding gracefully, with a plaintive song 



34 



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FLOATS OVER OREGON 

and smiling countenances gave the white 
women a hearty shake of the hand," and 
were " not satisfied until they had taken 
them from their horses and saluted them 
with a kiss," — the mission of the chiefs 
to Saint Louis was bearing fruit. 

The results of this and subsequent 
missionary movements, in moulding Indian 
character, in saving and training native 
savages into the Christian temper and faith, 
belong rather to the domain of religious 
annals and the psychology of the savage 
mind as it meets the inevitable tide of 
incoming civilization, and is buoyed up or 
swamped by the billow as the case may be. 
We may not tarry now for such fascinating 
research, or interesting discussion ; for we 
are rather concerned in this narrative 
with those events which gave us the land, 
and caused our flag to float above it in 
peaceful possession : events in which the 
mission at Waiilatpu, and its superb 
leader Dr. Whitman, played so signal 
a part. We therefore slip over the six 
years of uncertainty, exploration and ne- 



35 



WHY OUR FLAG 

gotiations which finally determined the 
site of the mission and many details of 
its work, and come to the year 1842, 
when quite a party of settlers had accum- 
ulated near Waiilatpu, — (Walla Walla,) 
and the question of organizing a civil 
government under the stars and stripes 
was being vigorously agitated. 

Those were days of uneasiness and 
uncertainty. English settlers had also 
multiplied ; they were better organized, 
and were really the autocrats of the coun- 
try. But the still-hunt for preemption was 
not yet over : neither nation had been able 
to bring in settlers enough, or to induce 
a movement of sufficient strength to be 
decisive. So they watched each other; 
restive, chafing under what seemed to them 
neglect, longing for recognition by their 
respective governments, awaiting protec- 
tion, and eagerly looking for the day when 
their own home authorities should take 
some worthy notice of their pioneer citizens 
struggling for a permanent foothold in that 
far-away empire. 



36 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

Such was the condition of affairs in the 
early autumn of 1842. The Indians were 
friendly to the mission, but were strongly 
influenced by their old-time patrons, the 
great English fur traders, and were some- 
what suspicious of the newcomers. Those 
English Companies were now eager for 
English settlers : their policy in this regard 
had radically changed, for the world was 
opening its eyes to the wealth of this 
western empire, and growing anxious to 
possess it : the fur companies therefore 
were breathless, expectant, and waiting ! 

Our American missionaries also were 
eager for events: nominally, — yes, really, 
— devoted to their moral and religious 
work, they were not negligent of the crisis 
which was upon them. There was one 
among them who was a citizen before he 
was a missionary, and who loved his 
Country as he loved his God. He was a 
seer too, — who had the strands of a hero 
woven into his soul, and who saw that the 
possession of this vast productive domain 
by the United States was a consummation 



37 



WHY OUR FLAG 

of vastly more importance to the world and 
to the flag, than teaching a few Indian 
braves the Catechism; so he was watchful, 
nerved to the limit for any imminent oppor- 
tunity that might open to him. It soon 
came. 

The arrival at the mission, in September, 
1842, of Amos L. Lovejoy, with a com- 
pany of settlers, brought the first news to 
Dr. Whitman of the state of affairs at 
Washington touching the Oregon country. 
Through him he learned that the Ashbur- 
ton Treaty which it was supposed would 
fix the boundary between the United States 
and England from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific, would probably be signed before 
the adjournment of Congress in the fol- 
lowing March. 

It was now September, 1842, and Dr. 
Whitman, with his usual instantaneous 
conviction, at once decided that he must 
go immediately to Washington and lay the 
matter of Oregon and its ownership before 
President Tyler and the Secretary of State, 
Daniel Webster. There was no other 



38 






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FLOATS OVER OREGON 

possible way of communication, and the 
President was ignorant of the essential 
facts, which Dr. Whitman so well knew, 
and the significance of which he had the 
vision to discern. The next day he visited 
a sick man at Fort Walla Walla, one of 
the headquarters of the Hudson Bay Com- 
pany. There he found a score of English 
traders assembled and about sitting down 
to a banquet : he, the doctor, was invited 
to join them. The discussion soon turned 
upon the approaching treaty, and Whitman 
heard all, but said little : he was only the 
doctor ! 

While the banquet was in progress the 
company was startled by the arrival of an 
express messenger riding hard from Colville, 
three hundred and fifty miles up the river, 
saying that a company of one hundred and 
forty English and Canadian settlers were 
on the road for the Columbia Valley. 
One young priest threw his cap into the 
air and shouted : ' Hurrah ! for Oregon ! 
America is too late ! We 've got the 
country ! ! ! " 



39 



WHY OUR FLAG 

A lesser hero than Dr. Whitman would 
have gone back saddened to his mission, 
wondering at the strange apathy of the 
United States Government and the mys- 
terious Providence of God ! Not so he ! 
Though it was then late in the fall, and a 
mid-winter journey across the mountains 
was suicidal, — an unheard-of undertak- 
ing, — his decision was quickly made. 
With hardly a day's delay ; without 
even waiting for an important letter that 
was in preparation to the American Board 
regarding the mission, because the king's 
business required haste," and the loss of 
territorial sovereignty was imminent, — on 
the early morning of October 3d, 1842, 
Marcus Whitman, patriot hero even to 
martyrdom, bid a long good-bye to his 
faithful wife, and started, with one man, 
a guide and three pack mules, on that long 
and memorable ride to Washington to save 
Oregon to the flag. A conference of all 
the mission strongly urged him to desist 
from so perilous an undertaking, realizing 
the probably fatal outcome of the exposure, 



40 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

but as his determined spirit would brook 
no restraint, a reluctant consent was given, 
and in three days he was off. 

The perils and sufferings of that historic 
ride are enough to melt the stoutest heart; 
old mountaineers point to it as without a 
parallel in history, and it was believed by 
all to be a " ride down into the valley of 
the shadow of death." 

But Dr. Whitman was not a man to 
surrender to fear. His only thought was : 
" I must reach Washington before Con- 
gress adjourns or all may be lost ! " 

By rapid riding they reached Fort Hall 
in eleven days. There the old enemy of 
American immigration who had persuaded 
every settler except Marcus Whitman to 
part with his wagon there because " it is 
impossible to take a wagon over the 
Rockies," again undertook to defeat his 
journey to the States. 

Without any definite information on the 
subject, this officer. Captain Grant, mis- 
trusted that nothing but business of the 
utmost importance could lead a man to 



41 



WHY OUR FLAG 

make so perilous an attempt; and what 
could that urgent business be but the 
fundamental question of the ownership of 
the Oregon country ! Therefore he told 
him of the hopelessness of the effort, of 
the snow already twenty feet deep on the 
mountain ranges, of the hostile Indians 
now on the warpath, and of successive 
snowstorms daily destroying every possi- 
bility of making the hopeless passage. 
Whitman could not be detained by force, 
for he had a passport from the Govern- 
ment at Washington ; but the officer 
seemed to have won his case when they 
all retired to rest. Judge of his chagrin 
when, in the early morning, Dr. Whitman 
mounted his horse, and instead of turning 
toward the coast as he supposed he would, 
set out vigorously and fearlessly in a South- 
easterly direction to discover a new route 
to the States ! He knew the general trend 
of the ranges ; was a hardy and experienced 
mountaineer, and he knew of the Sante Fe 
trail to the East a thousand miles South of 
Fort Hall ; but would it be possible to 



42 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

reach it over the trackless mountains ! It 
was for him no question of safety, but of 
the relentless urgency of duty ! Nothing 
could detain him when once convinced 
that the interests of his country demanded 
the sacrifice. 

The weather grew more severe and the 
snowstorms were terrific. They were 
sometimes compelled to seek shelter in 
some deep ravine and were detained days 
at a time waiting for relief from the pierc- 
ing winds and impassable drifting snows. 
Once, after wandering several days with- 
out much real progress, the guide con- 
fessed himself hopelessly lost : then they 
returned to Fort Uncompagra to get a new 
guide, which cost the loss of seven days. 

Once, in a dark defile, their animals 
wild with pelting snow and cold, they 
found advance impossible and every trace 
of the path they had traversed entirely 
obliterated. Dismounting, in his extrem- 
ity Dr. Whitman kneeled in the snow and 
committed unto God the future of Oregon, 
his mission there and his beloved wife : 



43 



WHY OUR FLAG 

meanwhile the mule, left thus to himself, 
turned his long ears this way and that, and 
suddenly plunged through the drifts, the 
party following ; for the old guide said : 
"That mule will find our last camp if he 
lives long enough," and he did : the storm 
abated and they moved on. 

They reached Grand River, the crossing 
of which was always dreaded even in 
summer, because of its strong, deep cur- 
rent. At this time it was frozen two 
hundred feet on either side, but so swift 
was the current that an unfrozen torrent of 
icy waters was sweeping by between the 
ice-banks, and the guide said : " It cannot 
be crossed." '' We must cross it, and at 
once,'^ said the intrepid Doctor, and cutting 
a pole he drove his horse to the edge of the 
ice, and said to his companions : " Now 
you shove me off;" which they did. 
There was a sudden plunge ; the horse and 
rider ominously disappeared, but presently 
rose to the surface and boldly struck out 
swimming : soon they reached the further 
ice, — broke it with the pole until it was 



44 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

strong enough to bear his weight, when he 
sprung from the saddle, and soon had the 
horse with him on solid ice, and both were 
safe. The rest of the party followed his 
example and the perilous transit was over. 

The many incidents of this journey sur- 
pass the wildest romance : once a wolf 
stole his only axe — attracted by a leather 
thong that bound the helve, — and it was 
never seen again ; a priceless treasure. 

But we must hasten on with him to the 
end. He reached Santa Fe at last, but 
could there learn nothing of the treaty, and 
he pressed on. At Saint Louis he eagerly 
inquired : '' Has the Ashburton Treaty been 
signed ? " " Yes, in August ; " two months 
before he left Oregon ; and it was passed 
by the Senate and signed by the President, 
November tenth, while he was floundering 
in the snows of the mountain canons. 
"Did it include Oregon?" "No!" 
nobody cared about Oregon : it settled the 
ownership of a few controverted acres in 
the North of Maine, but the Oregon ques- 
tion was listlessly left open for some more 



45 



WHY OUR FLAG 

convenient moment. He pressed on, still 
hopeful and determined. 

It was the third of March when he 
reached the Capitol, five months to a day 
since he left his door on the Walla Walla ; 
and now he must see the President ! 
He wore coarse garments and buckskin 
breeches ; hands, feet and face had been 
severely frozen ; his chin was covered with 
five months' beard, and the manners of the 
mountaineer had become natural to him. 
But he secured the coveted interview, first 
with Webster and then with President 
Tyler, and told them his story. Webster 
declared that settlement of that distant 
country was impossible ; that a wagon 
road could never be built across those 
trackless mountains, and that the land was 
worthless and wholly inaccessible. Rising 
in his majestic conviction. Dr. Whitman 
said : " Mr. Secretary, that is the grand mis- 
take that has been made by listening to the 
enemies of American interests in Oregon : 
six years ago I was told there was no 
wagon road to Oregon and it was impos- 



46 




STATUE OF MARCUS WHITMAN, PHILADELPHIA 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

sible to take a wagon there ; and yet, in 
spite of pleading and almost threats, / took 
a wagon over the road and have it now ! " 
Then warming up in his description of the 
wealth of the Oregon country, he said : 
" Mr. Secretary, you had better give all 
New England for the cod and mackerel 
fisheries of Newfoundland than to barter 
away Oregon." 

That was a memorable meeting ; here 
was a new character for those polished 
diplomats to deal with. He asked nothing 
for himself; wanted only his country's 
wealth, and honor to the flag ! The words 
of this hardy pioneer, with the scars of his 
battling with the elements upon him, the 
wear of five weary months lining his brow ; 
not a stitch of woven material on his back, 
nor a thread of selfish ambition in his soul, 
made a deep impression upon the President 
and were not lost upon the learned Secre- 
tary, — although the fisheries of his New 
England constituency were very dear to 
him. At last President Tyler granted his 
one request: — viz. — that nothing should 



47 



WHY OUR FLAG 

be done toward parting with Oregon until 
Whitman himself should be given time to 
demonstrate its accessibility to immigra- 
tion from the States by land. 

Whitman was content : it was enough ; 
he knew his ground and his ability to 
accomplish the self-imposed task. His 
matchless ride, — which put Sheridan's 
into the shade, for personal peril and 
insistent bravery, — had not been in vain ; 
and now the welcome duty was upon him 
to secure immigrants and conduct them 
into the Columbia Valley. 

Already other agencies also were at work 
to induce settlers to go to Oregon : quite 
a company had migrated thither the pre- 
ceding year, and more were preparing to 
follow in the summer of 1843. When 
therefore Dr. Whitman had secured from 
President Tyler the desired promise of 
delay in negotiating the surrender of the 
Oregon country, he immediately wrote to 
the Saint Louis papers, and also published 
a pamphlet, and scattered far and wide his 
intention to lead a colony of settlers across 



48 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

the mountains that season. Inspiring con- 
fidence in many who were hesitatingly 
considering such a migration, he interested 
many others ; instructed them in regard to 
the cattle and sheep required ; assured them 
of the feasibility of taking wagons across, 
and offered personally to conduct the 
expedition in safety to the Columbia or 
the Willamette Valley. 

Gathering together the scattered com- 
panies, and guiding them as occasion 
required, he met his triumphant Waterloo 
at Fort Hall where Captain Grant again 
plied all his arts to induce the immigrants 
to leave their wagons : nothing but Dr. 
Whitman's determination could persuade 
them to keep their wagons, but this they 
finally did, and the redoubtable Doctor 
conducted them over in safety and landed 
them near his mission station in the early 
autumn. The Honorable Jesse Apple- 
gate, m his " Day with the Cow Column 
in 1843," says: "From the time Dr. 
Whitman joined us on the Platte until he 
left us at Fort Hall, his great experience 



49 



WHY OUR FLAG 

and indomitable energy were of priceless 
value to the migrating column. His con- 
stant advice, which we knew was based on 
a knowledge of the road before us, was : 
'Travel, travel, travel ! nothing else will 
take you to the end of your journey ; 
nothing is wise that does not help you 
along ; nothing is good for you that causes 
a moment's delay ! ' It is no disparage- 
ment to others to say that to no other 
individual are the emigrants of 1843 so 
much indebted for the successful conclu- 
sion of their journey as to Dr. Marcus 
Whitman." 

This single incident reveals something of 
the versatility needed and secured through 
the ripe experience and personal sagacity of 
their leader. Honorable S. A. Clarke who 
was one of the party, writes : 

" At the crossing of the Snake River, all 
the teams were chained together in a long 
string, the strongest in the lead, and the 
weakest in the middle. For quite a space 
the water was swift and deep. As soon as 
the teams were in position, Dr. Whitman 



50 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

tied a rope around his wrist, and starting 
his horse into the swift stream, swam him 
over it. He then called for several others 
to do the same, and when there were 
enough of them to give the required force, 
the lead team was started into the current, 
and by the strength of the men and horses 
on the other side, they were drawn across. 
The long line of cattle swung down the 
stream in the center, carried down by the 
strong current, but as soon as the lead 
teams touched bottom on the further side, 
everything was safe." 

Thus they went on over the long, long 
line of wearisome travel, — that great pro- 
cession, of wagons, cattle and men. A very 
few of the original immigrants still remain, 
and one of the author's honored friends in 
Walla Walla was a child of two years 
when she crossed the continent with this 
great caravan, of which Dr. Whitman was 
the safety and the inspiration. 

^ jt ■^ ^ -4t 

vr w "Jv vt" -TV 

Let me interrupt this historic progress 
of events by an incident of to-day : — the 



51 



WHY OUR FLAG 

author was invited to give an address on 
this theme before the High Schools of 
Oakland, California, in their large hall : a 
thousand students had gathered to listen. 
As I approached the door, an elderly man 
in workman's garb, addressed me as fol- 
lows : ' Is this Dr. Hallock and are you 
going to speak of Marcus Whitman?" 
"I am." "Are you going to tell of the 
great procession of cattle and immigrants 
coming down the Blue Mountains into the 
valley ? " " I certainly am ! " *' Then," 
said he " I must come in and hear, for I 
loved Dr. Whitman ; he was the life of 
the caravan ; and I, a lad of seventeen, 
drove the front team in that procession 
down the Blue Mountains ! " The ador- 
ing driver sat with me on the platform, and 
when, at the climax of the description, I 
pointed to this humble toiler, the students 
rose as one man and gave him three rous- 
ing cheers. The modest man blushed 
like a girl, and it was a proud moment for 
that sturdy admirer of the great Doctor. 

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52 




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FLOATS OVER OREGON 

The long caravan covered its wearisome 
route successfully, and on the brightest 
day of September, 1843, eleven months 
from the time he bid good-bye to his faitW 
ful wife at Waiilatpu, — and she had heard 
not a single word in all that time, — Mrs. 
Whitman lifted her waiting eyes and saw 
that vast company of a thousand settlers, 
with cattle, and sheep, wagons and other 
implements of husbandry, descending into 
the Walla Walla Valley : — soon came the 
clatter of hoofs in the street, and lo ! the 
man she loved was at her door, and the long 
suspense was over: Dr. Whitman was at 
home ! 

Aye ! and more than that ! The coun- 
try was saved : the valley of the Columbia 
settled : and as we look over those eventful 
pages of human progress, through heroism 
and daring and determined effort, we are 
able now to answer the question, Why 
our flag floats over Oregon. It was 
because of Marcus Whitman's ride to 
Washington, in the wiriter of 1842-3, to 
tell the President and Secretary, before it 



53 



WHY OUR FLAG 

was too late, the value of the empire which 
they were on the point of bartering away to 
England for " a few small fishes I " 
^ If Paul Revere at Lexington, and Archie 
Gillespie at Johnstown, and Sheridan at 
Winchester are immortalized by their 
eventful rides, surely poet and painter 
may find rare theme also for their genius 
in delineating this unparalleled ride of Dr. 
Marcus Whitman, during that terrible half 
year of struggle with the storms and 
gulches, the cold and bitter exposures of 
the Stoney Mountains. And he won his 
contention. 

Hence, by this culmination of many 
events, the land is ours, — not England's, — 
and our flag floats over it in peaceful pos- 
session ! 

The New York Independent published, 
some years ago, a poem by Alice Welling- 
ton Rollins, entitled "Whitman's Ride." 
We select a few extracts from her poem : — 

" Then he said ' GOOD-BYE ! ' and with firm- 
set lips 
Silently rode from his cabin door 



54 





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FLOATS OVER OREGON 

Just as the sun rose over the tips 

Of the phantom mountains that loomed before 

The woman there in the cabin door ; 

With a dread at her heart she had not known 

When she, with him, had dared to cross 

The Great Divide. None better than she 

Knew what the terrible ride would cost 

As he rode, and she waited, each alone. 

Whether all were gained or all were lost, 

No message of either gain or loss 

Could reach her ; never a greeting stir 

Her heart with sorrow or gladness ; — he 

In another year would come back to her 

If all went well ; and if all went ill — 

Ah ! God ! could even her courage still 

The pain at her heart ? If the blinding snow 

Were his winding sheet, she would never know : 

If the Indian arrow pierced his side, 

She would never know where he lay and died : 

If the icy mountain torrents drowned 

His cry for help, she would hear no sound ! 

Nay, none would hear, save God, who knew 

What she had to bear, and he had to do. 



" Four thousand miles from his cabin door 
The Potomac meets the Atlantic. On 
Over the trail grown rough and steep. 
Now soft on the snow, now loud on the rock, 



55 



WHY OUR FLAG 

Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides : — 
The United States must keep Oregon ! 

It was October when he left 

The Walla Walla, though little heed 

Paid he to the season. Nay indeed, 

In the lonely canons just ahead 

Little mattered it what the almanac said. 

It was November when they came 
To the icy stream : would he hesitate ? 
Not he ! the man who carried a State 
At his saddle-bow. . . . 

It is December as they ride 
Slowly across the Great Divide. 

It was February when they rode 
Into Saint Louis : . . . 

It was March when he rode at last 

Into the streets of Washington. 

The warning questions came thick and fast ; - 

* Do you know that the British will colonize, 

If you wait another year, Oregon 

And the Northwest, thirty-six times the size 

Of Massachusetts ? ' . . . 



" It was October, forty-two 

When the clattering hoof-beats died away 



56 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

On the Walla Walla, that fateful day. 

It was September, forty-three — 

Little less than a year, you see — 

When the woman who waited thought she heard 

The clatter of foot-beats that she knew 

On the Walla Walla again. ' What word 

From Whitman ? ' JVhitman himself ! And see ! 

What do her glad eyes look upon ? 

The first of two hundred wagons rolls 

Into the valley before her. He 

Who, a year ago, had left her side, 

Had brought them over the Great Divide — 

Men, women and children, a thousand souls — 

The army to occupy Oregon ! 

You know the rest. In the books you have read 

That the British were not a year ahead. 

The United States have kept Oregon 

Because of one Marcus Whitman. He 

Rode eight thousand miles, and was not too late ! 



" And Whitman? Ah ! my children, he 
And his wife sleep now in a martyr's grave ! " 

Yes ! the sequel is a sad, sad tragedy of 
martyrdom. In 1843 Whitman was in 
Washington. In 1846 the treaty was 



57 



WHY OUR FLAG 

signed which secured to us the country, 
with the 49th parallel of latitude as the 
international boundary. News traveled 
slowly in those days and it was 1847 when 
the British settlers knew they had lost the 
country irrevocably. It was a stunning 
blow to them, and Dr. Whitman was a 
shining mark for vengeance. There are 
serious indications that the development 
of hostility among the hitherto friendly 
Indians was not unsuggested by other than 
Indians : but we confine ourselves to well- 
known facts. Enough to say, that on the 
twenty-ninth day of November, 1847, 
while the Doctor was prescribing for a 
sick Indian, another Indian who had long 
been his faithful friend, crept up stealthily 
behind him as he sat leaning over, and 
drawing a hatchet from beneath his 
blanket, struck the back of his head with 
fatal force, and Dr. Whitman fell with his 
death-wound, inflicted in a moment of dis- 
trust by the hand of one whom he loved 
and had sought to help and save ! Thir- 
teen others were butchered and the Mission 



58 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

was practically wiped out. A heap of sods 
was thrown over their assembled remains, 
making a mound long known as "The 
Great Grave." This was fenced in later 
by a group of students who had pity, and 
for fifty years no other monument marked 
the spot where fell as heroic a patriot and 
devoted a missionary, as ever loved the 
flag : and he planted it to stay, upon the 
broad land " Where rolls the Oregon, " 
whose value he well knew and whose 
secrets he told to the world at the peril of 
his life, and " was not too late ! " 

As confirming some facts regarding Dr. 
Whitman's ride and his subsequent con- 
duct of the immigrants across to the 
Columbia, there are two State papers on 
file in the Office of the Secretary of War 
at Washington, bearing this endorsement : 

"Marcus Whitman; inclosing synop- 
sis of a bill, with his views in reference to 
importance of the Oregon Territory, War. 
382 — rec. June 22, 1844." 

The letter of Dr. Whitman proceeds to 
say : — 



59 



WHY OUR FLAG 

"To the Hon. James M. Porter, Secre- 
tary of War : 

Sir — Incompliance with the request 
you did me the honor to make last winter 
while in Washington, I herewith transmit 
to you the synopsis of a bill which, if it 
could be adopted, would, according to my 
experience and observation, prove highly 
conducive to the best interests of the United 
States generally, to Oregon where I have 
resided for more than seven years as a 
missionary, and to the Indian tribes that 
inhabit the immediate country. The Gov- 
ernment will now doubtless for the first 
time be apprised through you, or by means 
of this communication, of the immense 
immigration of families to Oregon which 
has taken place this year. I have, since 
our interview, been instrumental in piloting 
across the route described in the accom- 
panying bill, and which is the only eligible 
wagon road, no less than three hundred 
families, consisting of one thousand persons 
of both sexes, with their wagons amounting 
to one hundred and twenty, six hundred 



60 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

and ninety-four oxen, and seven hundred 
and seventy-three loose cattle. 

"The emigrants are from different States, 
but principally from Missouri, Arkansas, 
Illinois and New York. The majority of 
them are farmers, lured by the prospect of 
bounty in lands, by the reported fertility 
of the soil, and by the desire to be first 
among those who are planting our Institu- 
tions on the Pacific Coast. Among them 
are artisans of every trade, comprising, with 
farmers, the very best material for a new 
colony. As pioneers these people have 
undergone incredible hardships, and having 
now safely passed the Blue Mountain 
Range with their wagons and effects, have 
established a durable road from Missouri 
to Oregon, which will serve to mark per- 
manently the route for larger numbers each 
succeeding year, while they have practically 
demonstrated that wagons drawn by horses 
or oxen can cross the Rocky Mountains to 
the Columbia River, contrary to all the 
sinister assertions of those who pretended it 
to be impossible, etc., etc." 



61 



WHY OUR FLAG 

The letter proceeds to suggest a system 
of " posts " along the route which shall 
facilitate the movements of colonists, fur- 
nish adequate supplies at reasonable cost, 
and afford protection from Indian tribes. 
The Bill itself is designed to promote safe 
intercourse with Oregon, to suppress the 
violence of Indians, to protect the revenue 
and mail transportation, etc. 

The last public writing of Dr. Whitman 
bears date of October 16th, 1847, only 
one month before his death, and is also 
addressed to the Secretary of War, touch- 
ing the proposed army posts, and suggest- 
ing plans to guard against smuggling, fur- 
nishing liquors to Indians, etc., looking 
toward an efficient police, and designed to 
cement the friendliness of the Indian tribes. 

In a Senate document (Forty-first Con- 
gress, February 9, 1871) we read : — 

" There is no doubt but the arrival of 
Dr. Whitman in 1843 was opportune. 
The President was satisfied that the coun- 
try was worth the effort to win it. The 



62 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

delay was fortunate, for there is reason 
to believe that if the offer had been 
renewed of the forty-ninth parallel to the 
Columbia and thence down the river to 
the Pacific Ocean, it would have been 
accepted. The visit of Whitman com- 
mitted the President against any such 
action." 

An intimate personal friend of Webster 
writes in the Independent, 1870 : It is 
safe to assert that our country owes it to 
Dr. Whitman and his associate mission- 
aries, that all the territory West of the 
Rocky Mountains and as far South as the 
Columbia River is not now owned by 
England and held by the Hudson Bay 
Company." 

And immediately after the conference 
with Dr. Whitman in Washington, Web- 
ster wrote to Minister Everett and said : — 
"The Government of the United States 
has never offered any line South of forty- 
nine and never will." A great transforma- 
tion of opinion, whose cause is not far to 
seek. Then the success of Whitman's 



63 



WHY OUR FLAG 

party of immigration was heralded far and 
wide, and a signal conversion of public 
sentiment resulted : instead of the fatal 
apathy of the past, an enthusiastic party 
was organized, emblazoning upon its ban- 
ners the legend, " Fifty-four-forty or fight ! ", 
and the Columbia as an international 
boundary was forever rejected. A very 
reasonable compromise was effected, on 
the basis of the forty-ninth parallel, as 
incorporated in the treaty of 1846, and 
Oregon, in its larger significance, was 
finally covered by the stars and stripes. 

And what is Oregon .? It is an Empire ! 
It contains such timber forests, of fir, cedar 
and pine as nowhere else puncture the sky 
with golden tips ! It has developed mines, 
rich in gold and silver, and coal and iron, 
that will make many rich. It has evolved 
a commerce with the Orient which already 
in its infancy brings a hundred thousand 
tons of tea, — with train-loads of silks — 
into a single Puget Sound port each year. 
What cargoes have been unladen on our 



64 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

Pacific wharves, — rich argosies of the far 
East ! 

Oregon ! its area equals the com- 
bined acres of Maine, Vermont, Massa- 
chusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New 
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Dela- 
ware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia 
and enough left to make three Connecti- 
cuts ; and our flag floats over it all in 
undisputed possession, — thanks to Dr. 
Marcus Whitman ! He placed those stars 
there as he battled with storms and snows 
in mountain passes, with Oregon in his 
pocket, during that ever-memorable winter 
of 1842-3. 

Dr. Whitman builded better than he 
knew ; but Whitman knew more about 
Oregon, and saw its coming future better 
than Daniel Webster or President Tyler, 
and they learned of him ! Had he waited 
until spring as friends advised, all North 
of the Columbia had been British to- 
day, and the chances are that we should 
never have owned a foot of land on the 
Pacific Coast. Had he waited till spring, 



65 



WHY OUR FLAG 

either Oregon would have been ceded 
before his arrival at the Capitol, and, — 
since it was only in the following May 
that war was declared with Mexico, prob- 
ably our possession of California would 
have been imperilled, and all its golden 
treasures lost by us ! 

Other men than Marcus Whitman, and 
other agencies than missionary, conspired 
to secure unto us so grand an empire ; — 
but the culmination was imminent : — the 
wealth of lands so little known, was silently 
slipping inevitably from our grasp and the 
hour for which England waited was about 
to strike ! It was reserved for Dr. Whit- 
man to ride across the wintry leagues, 
with the key to the situation dangling from 
his brawny wrist ; he placed it safely in 
the President's keeping : then he himself 
opened the pass of the Rockies, the door 
of empire, — to a thousand settlers, and the 
Coast, — the Kingdom, — of the Pacific 
was ours to the end of time ! 

Washington did not make American 
liberty : Lincoln alone did not free the 



66 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

American slave : Whitman did not capture 
Oregon : but as truly as the fate of free- 
dom turned upon the career of Washing- 
ton, — or the fetters fell from the black 
man of America by the stroke of Lincoln's 
pen, — so surely was Oregon saved to the 
Union by the timely tidings which Whit- 
man carried to the White House at the 
peril of his life, telling the truth about 
Oregon, and flinging our flag to the winds 
that blow from the golden shores of that 
wide, western sea ! Anchored as we now 
are, on the great Pacific, we inscribe upon 
it the honored name of Marcus Whitman. 
And on the twenty-ninth of November 
1897, fifty years to a day from the massacre 
at the Mission, a great assembly packed the 
Opera House at Walla Walla, including all 
surviving members of the old Mission, — 
recalling the scenes of the migration and 
the massacre, and paying a great debt of 
honor to the memory of the martyred 
Patriot. The Oration was delivered by 
Leavitt H. Hallock, D.D., of California, 
with prayer and song. 



67 



WHY OUR FLAG 

The next day, on the site of the Great 
Grave, two thousand people gathered, 
among them eight survivors of the Mission 
Massacre, and Mrs. C. S. Pringle, oldest 
of Dr. Whitman's adopted children, said, 
*mid many tears : " I cannot express to 
you the feelings of my sisters, myself, and 
these survivors as we view this scene. 
Fifty years ago yesterday morning the sun 
rose yonder on a happy home and all the 
busy bustle of life. The sun went down 
on a scene of death and desolation, — of 
weeping and wailing. Fifty years ago 
to-day we went as prisoners of a savage 
band of Indians, — no hope of escape, — 
all dark and despair. But Providence 
made a way of escape, and we stand 
here to-day." Repairing again to the 
Opera House on account of the inclement 
weather, a dedicatory oration was deliv- 
ered by the Rev. J. R. Wilson, D.D., of 
the Whitman Monument Association of 
Portland, Oregon, and the sum of $25.50 
was given by the Nez Perces Indians 
toward the monument. The remains of 



68 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

all the martyrs are enclosed in a beautiful 
mausoleum, and on the hill above, in the 
midst of a seven acre tract, stands a shaft of 
Vermont marble, nearly twenty-seven feet 
high, erected at a cost of about twenty-five 
hundred dollars : — a modest monument to 
a great and noble martyr ! 

The fiftieth anniversary of the Whitman 
massacre was also commemorated in the 
First Congregational church of the City of 
Washington, December 5th, 1897, the 
Sunday after the Anniversary, at which 
Justice David B. Brewer presided : he also 
spoke fitting words, as did Senator John 
L. Wilson of the State of Washington, 
General O. O. Howard, long a resident of 
the Pacific Coast, and Dr. S. M. Newman, 
the pastor of the church. 

Also on the Witherspoon Building in 
Philadelphia is a striking statue of Dr. 
Whitman and his historic wagon wheel, 
commemorating his memorable journey 
across the continent. Thus, though late, 
posterity and a grateful nation are beginning 
to give " honor to whom honor is due.'* 



69 



WHY OUR FLAG 

There is another monument, more 
enduring than brass, and more valuable 
than anything produced by artist's chisel, 
and it is worthy to be written in this little 
book of loving tribute. It is the noble 
institution at Walla Walla, Washington, 
which bears the name and maintains the 
spirit of its illustrious patron saint; — it is 
" Whitman College." Closely associated 
with its early history, and, in fact, its 
founder, was the Rev. Cushing Eells, 
D. D., an associate of Dr. Whitman, who 
came to the territory in 1838. '^ Father 
Eells" was born in 1810, graduated at 
Williams College and East Windsor Hill 
Seminary, and devoted himself to the Ore- 
gon and Washington Mission until his 
death on his eighty-third birthday, Febru- 
ary 16, 1893. Many a thrilling tale we 
were permitted to hear from his devoted 
lips, and we buried him with many honors, 
from the first church of Tacoma in '93, a 
venerable missionary, with only one fur- 
lough in his self-denying service of fifty-five 
years, and that was spent in securing funds 



70 




< 
< 

6 
p 
B 

o 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

from friends in the East for the enterprise 
so near and dear to his heart. 

This "Father Eells," long and inti- 
mately associated with Dr. Whitman, 
standing one day at the Great Grave, was 
meditating on the work of his departed 
friend ; and there, with uncovered head, he 
determined to found a school to the mem- 
ory of his honored colleague. He bought 
the Mission reservation for a thousand dol- 
lars, and proceeded to work the land, — to 
make butter and sell produce, and to live 
most economically, with the valued aid of 
his devoted wife, in order to save for Whit- 
man Seminary. It was his heart's desire 
to locate the memorial school at the old 
Mission in Waiilatpu, but meanwhile the 
city of Walla Walla had come into being 
six miles away, and it seemed better to 
plant the school there. Dr. D. S. Baker 
gave six and a half acres for a campus, and 
the first building was erected in 1866. At 
its dedication, October 13th, its first Prin- 
cipal, Rev. P. B. Chamberlain, said : " Other 
men may arise who will render great ser- 



71 



WHY OUR FLAG 

vice to this part of our country, but no 
other man can expect another opportunity 
of actually saving this whole region to the 
American people as Dr. Whitman so 
clearly did." 

In 1882, under the lead of the Rev. 
George H. Atkinson, the scope of the 
institution was enlarged, Dr. Alexander 
Jay Anderson, Ph. D., was elected its first 
President, and in 1883 the legislature 
granted it a new charter under the name 
of "Whitman College." 

In 1871, "Whitman County" was estab- 
lished by act of the Washington legisla- 
lature, and now this memorial county and 
college stand in the very center of the 
great Northwest, an educational force for 
the elevation of the "Oregon Country," — 
Washington, Idaho and Oregon. 

Rev. Stephen B. L. Penrose, one of the 
honored "Washington Band" who went 
from Yale to Eastern Washington, in 1890, 
was elected President of Whitman Col- 
lege in 1893, and an era of marked pros- 
perity has resulted from his strong, tactful 



72 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

and wise administration in the interest of a 
Christian college for the Northwest that 
shall equal, in scholarship and high ideals 
of efficiency, any of the most favored New 
England colleges. Nor is this idle dream- 
ing. Whitman has made many friends, 
not the least of whom is Dr. D. K. Pear- 
sons whose substantial gifts have done 
much to make the modern Whitman pos- 
sible. It has a beautiful campus, four 
modern and well-equipped buildings of 
stone and brick, six wooden buildings, a 
good library, laboratories, museum, an 
excellent conservatory of music, a prepar- 
atory department, and a splendid college 
spirit, with a notable faculty filled with 
intelligent zeal, learning and devotion. 

With four hundred active students, men 
and women, fresh from the fields and fine 
climate of this favored Eastern Washing- 
ton, — with a freshman class of nearly a 
hundred ; — it has both a history, rooted in 
the memory of the martyr ; — and a future, 
rich according to the measure of this grow- 
ing empire which will yet startle the 



73 



WHY OUR FLAG 

world with its wealth of resources and its 
achievements ! A vigorous manhood is 
indigenous to this favored clime, and Whit- 
man College is bound to be equal to its 
great opportunity. 

The natural wealth of this country is 
enormous. It contains practically one-half 
the standing timber of the United States, 
and the largest body of virgin forest in the 
world. Silver, gold and copper inexhaust- 
ible in quantity, coal in vast abundance, 
and a water-power of 12,000,000 horses, 
in the Columbia basin alone. But its most 
superb resources are agricultural : wheat, 
potatoes, hay and oats, with choicest fruits 
of all kinds, wonderfully developed by 
irrigation, will enable this country to sus- 
tain a population of fifty million people 
in the not distant future. 

The present population of these three 
states is above two million, and its resources 
barely touched as yet. In the center of 
this rich area stands the thriving little city 
of Walla Walla, beautiful for situation, 
with a population of twenty thousand well- 



74 




RKV. STEPHEN B. L. PENROSE 
President of Whitman College 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

to-do people, proud of their site and city 
and proud of their college. 

But Whitman College is not a mere 
local institution. Recognizing its poten- 
tial future, a company of sixty citizens of 
the three great states are organized into a 
Board of Overseers, aiming to create in the 
heart of the Oregon Country a true col- 
lege, with adequate endowment, every way 
worthy of its history and its opportunity. 

Christian, but not sectarian, these men 
plan to make Whitman the ideal college 
of the Northwest, with an initial endow- 
ment of two million dollars, and a plan as 
expansive as this growing West. 

What Harvard and Yale are to New 
England, Whitman hopes to be to the 
Northwest. A school of mines, of tech- 
nology, of forestry and irrigation, of com- 
merce and banking, and of high art ; all 
are included in the larger aim, and all, — 
sooner or later, — must surely materialize ; 
for is not this the educational center of a 
coming empire ! 



75 



WHY OUR FLAG 

But farms and artesian wells, — produc- 
tive acres and virgin forest reserves, — 
stately mountains and sturdy cities, popu- 
lous and prosperous, — all are subordinate 
to a noble type of Christian manhood. To 
this type, the story of the missionary mar- 
tyr has committed us, and the signal Prov- 
idence of God has sealed the prophecy for 
all coming generations. 

And when the later chapters shall be 
written, and the story of the Northwest 
shall shine forth conspicuous in the annals 
of the states, let us and our remotest pos- 
terity never forget the vision and the 
heroism of that Christian missionary, who 
stormed the Rocky Mountain ranges in 
midwinter, with the destiny of an empire 
in the balance, and then brought out to 
their new home a thousand settlers who 
would never consent to witness flying over 
their triad of State Houses any other flag 
than the stars and stripes, and who planted 
patriotism in the virgin soil with their first 
crop. 



76 



FLOATS OVER OREGON 

Why does our flag float over Oregon ? 
There is but one answer : — Because of 
Marcus Whitman, — missionary, patriot, 
martyr, seer ; — crowned of God, honored 
of men, builded into the name and fame of 
" The Oregon Country ! " 



THE END. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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017 187 229 7 



